Fourteen Trips Around the Sun Reviews

Delusions of Adequacy Review - 14 Trips
I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS - Review by Heather Browne
Seattle Sound Magazine Review
Northwest Music Blog Review
Used Wigs Review

If you think hard about how you relate to music and your relationship with the songs and albums that you love, you find that the pieces that truly mean the most to you are the ones that speak honestly to your heart. They use sound to move ideas and emotions into your head space and re-kindle chemical reactions that you crave. Typically the music is the vessel and the lyrics are the cargo and before they dock with you and off load, you get to imagine how the journey went.

This album represents what the absolute very best in songwriting is. It's the marriage of the vessel and the cargo. It's the emotion and the truth. It's the need you have and the dreams you dream. In a world where we have pushed the art of songwriting to the wayside and retreated to the quick and easy, Fourteen Trips Around The Sun pulls you back, with intelligent songwriting and craftsmanship. It's a record that is daring, yet accessible without being full of itself in the artsy fartsy way. It invites you to the splendor of music exploration and each song takes you by the hand and shows you something better than what you've been listening to.

If there is any justice in the world of music and art, Half Acre Day will be given the power to spread this music to the masses. I invite you to take a vacation for $15 and purchase this disc. The wonderful progressive indie pop songs and energy will reinvigorate your spirit. This album will become a dear friend.

I would put this album into that rare catagory of instant classic. It plays with the big boys of sound, you know who they are. Anemones, Showers, Median, Brown, Not Like the Movies, all the tracks are good and more importantly, as an album, work together like the finest watches in Switzerland. Enjoy.
- Steve Damm, Amazon.com

"Seattle space cases HAD have returned from their cruise around the galaxy and are ready to tell some stories about it. With the relaxing, floating tingle of the Brave New World drug, Soma, 16 tracks wash through the ears like a mellower Flaming Lips. Psychedelic indie folk is what your getting, both contemplatively introspective, a la Built to Spill, and Ween-like in their silliness. My favorite track and a potential hit single if I've ever heard one, "Stay on Target," could appeal to the Weezer crowd as well as lovers of space pop. "Astronauts," the follow-up single, would make Wayne Coyne proud. While I prefer the rocket fuel of Hawkwind, HAD provide a nicer, greener alternative that provides a pleasant change of pace."
- Chuck Foster, The Big Takeover

Primo de la Rocket Suit Reviews

"...distinguished by an ability to balance streetwise rock aggression with radio-smart hooks. If you're an A&R executive in a shopping mood, this is a must-hear."
-Larry Flick, Billboard

"...nails their reputation as a forward-looking widescreen pop band that evokes the magnificence of peers like The Flaming Lips, Wilco, Jayhawks & Grandaddy. Songs like the transcendent 'She's North,' delicate 'Policemen and Planes,' folksy 'Fish,' jaunty 'Carpool' and punky 'Gregg Anderson, the band and me' declare a new shining star in the indie pop constellation."
-PowerOfPop.com

"...a stack of lulling pop songs with just-add-milk melodies you go for immediately. They often sneak up on you with a little acoustic-folk opening, then the band will come like a gathering rain you can feel advancing from Vancouver or Yakima. Such a sense of unpredictable backing continues throughout, on a melange of power-pop (the best cut, 'Policeman and Planes'), psych-pop (like 'Carpool') and indie-pop winners, as the quality of writing, singing, and developed arrangements never wavers... Primo is a grabber, with bold drums, thick guitars, rumbling bass, and sweet vocals, whether main singer, Matt Kristiansen, or his talented mates, Matt Cory, Marty Bellew, and Aaron McMullen. Out of a stack of typically mediocre releases, this is like food to a starving pop Shackleton stuck in the Antarctic ice."
-Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover "

"The dynamics of four distinct but very cohesive writing styles lends its talents to making this album anything but one-dimensional and dull. There is something for everyone on this album… catchy rock tunes, soulful excursions and quick-witted, banjo driven nuttiness. Whatever you do, be prepared for the unexpected with this album."
-Cedric, NowOnTour.com

"Musical swapsies ensues a lot with HAD; one glance at the inlay will show you that any one member is capable of handling 4 or more tasks, and will do so on various tracks, keeping things fresh and styles either slightly or to a much greater extent, different. For example, as far as I'm concerned, Carpool is incomparable to Alias, the reason being that these are, ever so slightly, different genres... I don't know what the hell they are, but each track on Primo de la Rocket Suit is an insular piece, and I don't think any one could really be confused with another (something which seems to be apparent on the EP in one or two cases). In fact, sometimes a track will end in a completely different way to its beginning. The result is an album to which it is a pleasure to listen. Rocket Suit is easy enough to listen to when you're tired and you just want a little music, but it also can hold up under a closer scrutiny, for when you'd like some intelligent lyrics."
Rhy, CD Baby.com

"This is one of those albums that just grows on you after every listen. With three songwriters, the songs never seem repetitive and they keep you guessing from track to track. The big highlight is 'Carpool,' a sort of 'I am the Walrus' for the new year with a catchy, catchy hook. When this becomes a single or a video is made, this band will be huge."
-Colonel Nate, Amazon.com customer

Half Acre Day Reviews

"Seattle's Half-Acre Day (Right Mind Records) have hit the bull's eye with their self-titled debut release. This is what I like best about my job. Receiving in the mail a promo copy of a disc by a band I've never heard of before, slipping it in the disc player and getting completely blown away. These guys have the pop sensibility nailed down pat, but tweak it ever so slightly with innovative use of the banjo, sitar, Pakistani banjo, horns and, get this, the rake! The 10 tracks offered up by Half-Acre Day move from psychedelic pop to rave-up rockers and introspective acoustic numbers all in the span of about 30 minutes. The result is a sound that falls somewhere amongst the clutter of Flaming Lips, Weezer and Ben Folds. In fact, come to think of it, this is what Manplanet would sound like if they weren't so derivative."
John Fleming, The Missoulan

The cover art of Seattle-based Half Acre Day's second release reveals a sly sense of humor-children fly kites from rooftops, oblivious that one of them has tumbled off--and the music delivers on the cover's promise. This peppy piece of power pop fittingly kicks off with the chiming guitars and distorted organ of "Limo." But "Let's All Get Together" sums up the disc best, as a shimmery sunshine sound with peaks through overcast words: "Listen to the good vibrations fill the atmosphere like bacon / We'll paint Seattle brown." From jangly guitar to prog-rock keyboards, Half Acre Day offers a Saturday morning cartoon kind of happy matched with darker lyrical content, offering the chance to think a little--while you smile and bob your head."
Mark Davis, The Advocate